CNN suspends reporter for tweeting in favour of Syrian, Iraqi refugees
Undated C-SPAN screengrab showing CNN journalist Elise Labott.
Labott was reacting to the House of Representatives passing the bill that would suspend the programme allowing Syrian and Iraqi refugees into the country until US national security agencies certify that they don't pose a security risk. The tweet garnered almost 2,500 retweets and more than 3,500 likes.
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Labott eventually apologised for her original tweet saying it was wrong of her to “editorialise”.
Some, including Washington Post reporter Eric Wemple, criticised Labott.
However, many on social media came to Labott’s defence, including prominent journalist and author Glenn Greenwald and NYU journalism professor and media critic Jay Rosen.
In the tweet above, Rosen, the journalism professor, compares Labott’s tweet with a recent CNN interview in which the anchors demanded why the French Muslim community was not taking some responsibility for the Paris attacks.
'Responsibility'
In the interview broadcast on November 15, CNN anchors Isha Sesay and John Vause spent a good part of the six-minute segment grilling Yasser Louati, the representative for Collective Against Islamophobia in France.
The segment begins with the text “Muslim communities fear backlash after attacks” on the screen, an indication of the original topic of the interview. However, it didn’t take long for Vause, a 25-year veteran journalist, to launch his tirade against the French Muslim community.
“Well, Yasser, if your camp is the French camp, why is it that no one in the Muslim community there in France knew what these guys were up to?”
Vause does not stop there. He adds some of his own judgement to the mix. “Because it seems to me that this was a pretty big plan. Surely someone beyond the seven guys who have been killed over the last 48 hours would have to have known something, and that was probably within the Muslim community, but yet no one said anything.”
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“Sir, the Muslim community has nothing to do with these guys. Nothing,” Louati firmly states. “We cannot justify ourselves for the actions of someone who just claims to be Muslim. Our secret services knew about these guys, and again, just like the January attacks, it turned out they were all on a blacklist somewhere, somehow on a desk.”
At this point, Vause interrupts Yasser mid-sentence and essentially repeats his earlier question, laying the blame squarely on French Muslims: “What is the responsibility within the Muslim community to identify what is happening within their own ranks when it comes to people who are obviously training and preparing to carry out mass murder?”
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Louati corrects the CCN anchor again. “No, no, no, no, sir — they were not from our ranks.”
“What these terrorists are blaming our country for is for its failed foreign policy,” Louati explains.
“[The terrorists] are a byproduct of our societies exporting their wars abroad and expecting no repercussion back home,” Louati adds.
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Continuing with the responsibility theme, Sesay then questions Louati about the large number of French Muslims going to join IS.
“There is indeed an issue, but that issue is due to foreign policies and failed domestic policies,” Louati replies, adding that radicalisation does not take place in mosques, “it takes place either on the internet or on the streets, away from organised communities”.
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At the conclusion of the interview, Vause expresses his judgement yet again: “I’ve yet to hear the condemnation from the Muslim community on this, but we’ll wait and see.”